


Of Midnight Smoothies and Murder Mysteries

by Offendedfish



Series: As Best We Can [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: BAMF Dick Grayson, BAMF Reader, Bickering, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Horror, Horror Movie Tropes, Protective Bruce Wayne, Protective Dick Grayson, Snake blepping, protective Reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27697717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Offendedfish/pseuds/Offendedfish
Summary: Sneaking out for a movie turns out to be a bad idea.  You would think two horror movie buffs would know this.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Reader, Dick Grayson/Reader
Series: As Best We Can [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1938778
Kudos: 40





	Of Midnight Smoothies and Murder Mysteries

**Author's Note:**

> So... this was supposed to come out on Halloween then I confessed about thirst then my priorities shifted. Well, since I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving this is just extended Halloween. It would be funny to do a Thanksgiving thing with the Batfam. Thanks to @littleredwing89 and @lucy-roo for proofreading this crack. Thanks to @ereawrites for the encouragement. And thanks to @littleredwing89 for the mood board. (I love you my dear enabler.) Also “[ ]” will indicate characters speaking in a different language. I sadly could not find grammar stuff for the language so you will have to bear with me. This is still part of the Merc! Reader series.

"Aliens don't exist," You huff around your thoroughly chewed straw, swirling the radioactive green smoothie Dick  _ insisted _ that you try. You debate on whether to take out the bag of confectioners sugar you bought and pour it in. Dick makes a noise, indiscernible with his own straw in his mouth. You cast a glance at him only to see his neon blue smoothie spurting out of his nose. Your snort quietly, the noise hidden by the rustling of grocery bags against your bouncing leg but based on the way he’s pouting at you, Dick clearly sees your lack of sympathy and takes offense. You shrug at him. 

Brushing the liquid away with the sleeve of his denim jacket, Dick levels you his best batglare. You give him an impassive half-asleep response of ‘hnnn’ which just gave him flashbacks about talking to Bruce. You’re entirely too focused on the fact that the blue of the smoothie is still alarmingly stark even against the blue of the denim. “You’ve met Superman, right?”

You roll your eyes at his piss poor attempt at intimidating you and pinch your straw between your thumb and index finger, trying to break apart the clumps of ice preventing you from getting more smoothie. “-Met is a strong word-” You drawled causing him to sneer. “Just say he kicked your ass six ways to Sunday like a normal person.”

“I  _ fought _ him.”

“You got your ass beat-” You glare at him sticking your green tongue out at him and in return he sticks his blue tongue out at you. It was true but he didn’t have to say it. This is always how your long-held arguments start. 

“Besides, aren’t you and Slade metas?” He breaks in after a long moment, instantly cutting off the possibility of weeks of not talking to each other. You smile balefully at him. “Precisely.”

“What? How does you being a weirdo disprove aliens?” 

You make an affronted sound through your nose but launch into your explanation in your professorial voice. “The guy’s gotta be some kind of meta and he probably just came up with the Krypton thing afterwards. It sounds cooler, yanno?” 

Dick looks up to the smog covered Gotham sky, leaning back against the solid brick pillar behind him. “Well, why can’t he be an alien?” He says dreamily tracing unseen constellations with his right hand. You briefly remember him mentioning stargazing with his parents when he was younger. There is something warm in the memory even if it wasn’t yours. You look down at him, eyebrow ticking. “Ok genius, tell me why there would be aliens that look exactly like us?”

“Why not?” He says grinning at you. The sterile lighting of the grocery store light filtering through smudgy windows highlighting his features. The shadows highlighting the shape of his cheekbones and the dimples forming at the edges of his cheeks. When had Dick gone from cute to handsome? You shake your head, avoiding his smiling corscian blue eyes. 

“Becaaauuuuuse, dipshit, that’s not how evolution works” You bite out. 

“What about convergent evolution?” He offers casually and your tongue freezes. A light flickers in his eyes and his pretty mouth twitch up into a laugh when you fail to respond. “You forgot about that, didn’t you? HA”

“I regret this conversation.”

“HA”

“Superman fanboy” you accuse, jabbing a finger into his chest. Dick giggles either from your weak deflection or the fact he’s ticklish, either way, your stomach does somersaults. 

“Just say you’re wrong.” He says grinning, the divots formed by his dimples becoming more apparent. You feel Yasiri’s tail flick across your collarbone, her body coiling up in response to your irritation. Your mouth curls too but the irritation doesn’t quite boil over as you expected it to, not when Dick smiles at you like that. There’s a strange twisting in your stomach. You aren’t sure what it is but you’re pretty sure that you don’t like it. You blow out a breath, sound caught between a tired laugh and a long-suffering sigh, and pick your grocery bags before getting up. 

Not even 5 seconds after you resolve to abandon him, Dick’s already by your side, falling into step with you bumping his shoulder against yours in a placating gesture. Yasiri slithers from the skin on the base of your neck to hiss at him. Dick smiles at her unfazed despite the clear and present danger. He pets her without much fuss from your usually ferocious snake. You make an amused noise at her compliance. 

The walk is spent in easy companionable silence. The kind you two settle into when Dick knows you need to settle down. You were a sore loser when it comes to arguments but so was he, so you tend to let the other work through it. You grimace at your lightly scuffed shoes. They weren’t expensive or flashy or even one of a kind but they were comfortable, reliable, and most importantly they were from Mr. Wintergreen- Uncle Wintergreen, he insisted. The fact that he’d taken the time at all made your stomach flip-

Your stomach dropped. Your throat and mouth felt dry. The scent of copper permeating the air as you stared at the red puddle beneath your white shoes, a severed finger poking at you. 

"Y/n?" 

You must have stopped abruptly. You turn to Dick mechanically and see his face crumple into worry. Before you can rush out words of dismissal, your ears tune in to the sounds of a haunting melody. Yasiri rattles around your neck once again leaving the safety of your collar bone. Your head swivels mechanically towards the old theatre. Dick looks at you curiously, concern flashing in his eyes when another scream erupts from the theater. You both stiffen, spines straightening. Eyes blown wide, your feet take you toward the theater. 

Dick falls into step with you.”You’re not seriously going, are you? You’ve- Didn’t we just watch a horror movie?”

“You seem to be going the same way.” You point out, side-eyeing him sharply, the sour look on your face not betraying the anxiety cloying at your spine. In the corner of your eye, you can see Dick huffing and crossing his arms over his chest. 

“I’m Robin.” 

“And I kicked your ass just 2 days ago and served it on a silver platter while quoting the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger,” You grin absolutely, unequivocally unapologetic. 

“I was protecting civilians!” He protests, throwing up his hands theatrically. 

“Iieerrelevant~”

Dick opens his mouth to contest your point but there really was convincing you on that. His face screws up and being the gracious loser that he is, he sticks his still neon blue tongue out at you. You, being the graceful winner that you were, stick your radioactively neon green tongue at him in answer. 

You continue to bicker about the merits of his heroism on the battlefield 'til you reach the front of the theater. You tuck your grocery bags behind debris by the entrance making sure to keep them well hidden. Dick wants to point out that they’ll probably be gone by the time you two are done but Yasiri was staring at him like she was about to strike at him for real this time. 

It- It wasn’t hard to get into the building. Dick held out his hand to you as you climbed over another set of debris. You take it. You thank him clumsily. He bows to you a gremlin smile spreading across his face. You sneer but give him a sharp smile in return. 

It’s dark. The absence of light is thick. It makes the sounds of your heartbeats uncomfortably loud. You swallow. You trace your finger along your skin, the hilt of your knife falls easily into your hand. You trace your finger on your other arm and hand the knife to Dick who shakes his head. You shrug and let it melt back into your skin. 

“You have a tracker on you, right?”

“No-” You eye him, cutting him a look of disbelief. “I-”

“Relax, I have one too.” You deadpan. 

Dick sighs. “You’re dad’s paranoid too?”

“So is yours” You snip, hackles drawn. 

“Bruce isn’t my dad.”

“Slade isn’t mine either.”

“Mentors?” Dick offers placatingly.

“Polite way of saying bossy prick, I guess.” You roll your eyes but concede. 

“I mean I don’t know about Wintergreen but Alfred taught me some manners.” Dick shrugs, folding his arms behind his head somehow relaxed despite the thick scent of blood in the air or maybe this was how Dick was when he was nervous. 

The truth was Wintergreen  _ had _ attempted to teach you manners but he’d run into quite a few problems. The first being that you were a terrible student. Sure, you caught on quickly when you could but anything you didn’t gravitate towards didn’t hold your limited attention long enough to make an actual impact on you. Now that in of itself was fixable with the right kind of bribery. The other problem was less so. Your mentor, if you could really call him that, was a rude bastard. Long story short, you’ve never seen the point, much to Wintergreen’s chagrin and Slade’s amusement. You were, however, a master of mouthing off. 

“Shouldn’t we call back up?”

You flick your eyes to him, uselessly, but based on the shifting of the body beside you he somehow got the message. “Go ahead, if you wanna explain to big daddy bats why you’re hanging out with me, sure.”

Yeah. That wasn’t an option. There was, of course, a silent understanding that bats probably knew about your little hangouts but still. 

  
  
  


You pad the walls with your left hand while your right was gripping Dick’s sleeve, white-knuckled. You cringe every now and again feeling the walls slick with what you weren’t eager to investigate. You strain your ear to listen for odd sounds but mostly to see if Dick, as you suspect, is echolocating. 

“How are you doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Silently echolocating?”

Dick snickers. “I am not. You do know B isn’t an actual bat, right?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot he was just a furry.” You sneer. Dick snorts a sound caught between amusement and offense. He clearly respected Bruce. Not the same way you respected Slade, maybe, but you understood how larger than life the Batman was even if he was the biggest pain in your ass by far. 

“Do you really have any room to make fun of my mentor when yours has ‘Stroke’ in his name?”

“I have plenty of room, probably. Why not echolocate to check just how much room I have?”

“Listen here-”

The opera music floods the silent hall, sharp and clear. You feel the air around you catch fire and your fraying nerves. You turn your head to Dick. Despite not being able to see him, you know his mouth flattens and his brow wrinkles the way they do when you two agree to do something incomprehensibly stupid. This time you do not argue or question or even complain. You simply go forward.

  
  


A scream, messy and jagged, tangles with the smooth crispness of the opera music. It makes your stomach turn almost as much as the idea of who or, more appropriately, whatever was behind it. You were familiar with the cruelties Gotham’s monsters were capable of. You have, after all, worked for quite a few. 

But this? 

This pure, uncut agony in that scream? That was just something you could not stomach. You feel Dick flinch at the sound, almost jumping out of his skin. You squeeze his arm once, then twice, then twice once more. You feel his hand on your wrist, reciprocating the gesture. You smile at him reassuringly not knowing whether it would make things better or whether he can actually see it. 

Neither of you is particularly good at dealing with people’s pain. That might not be the right word for it. Neither of you coped well. You absorbed too much of it. You were, however, much better at hiding it. Not that you could fault Dick on that. You didn’t even attempt. For Dick, humanity was a part of the job. Compassion? Kindness? That was to be expected of a hero not derided. To uphold that in the face of Gotham’s worst, that took strength. 

Strength, in your case, was directed elsewhere. Something bone-breaking, more visceral. You suppose that was the problem with keeping company with survivors. Perpetually dancing on the brink of death robbed you of something but you haven’t exactly known any other life besides this. 

The end of the hall is light by bright lights, sterile white, the kind you only saw in clinics. Your head runs through the catalog of Gotham’s rogues, possibilities of which utter psychopath could possibly be doing this. 

“We should call the cops.”

Not really really paying attention, you nod. You should probably. You grip the handle of your knife, flexing your fingers nervously, as another scream cuts through the air. Dick’s body curls, recoiling at the sound. The sound, this close, was enough to make you twitch. 

“Can’t we just text them?”

“What do you think this is? Canada?”

“Ok, fair but make sure to tell them you’re Dickle Grayson.” You tease, smiling way too easily considering the creepy atmosphere. 

Dick crosses his arms over his chest.“And summon a media storm?”

“It would get the police here faster.” 

“I hate it when you’re right,” Dick wishes he could wipe the absolutely smug grin off your face. “We need to back up. You know, in case, he can hear us.”

“I mean you are the one unarmed here.” You say, waving your arms at him. 

“No, I’m not. I have my bird-a-rangs.” Dick preens, taking them out from some pocket hidden in his jacket. 

“Bird-a-rangs.” You echo, raising a brow. 

“Yup. Bird-a-rangs.”

“You are officially- no, you are legally not allowed to name things.”

Dick makes an offended squawking noise.“Oh, come on! Still not as bad as Sharknado.”

“Take. That. Back. Heathen.”

“Make me.”

Both of you still. Yasiri unfurls from your collarbone, her tail rattling. You spin on your heel. Your knife swings out in a wide crescent of light. Thick crimson splashes across your face. At the end of your knife was a person- no, it was a person in the past tense. It makes a small cry when you wiggle the blade planted in its throat a fraction. Otherwise, it ignores the fact that it is, in fact, bleeding out from its jugular. It’s thick, clumsy limbs reach for you. Your stomach rolls. The thing in front of you, the mangled approximation of what was once a person, is lurching towards you. You think you sneer in disgust but your face is far too numb to tell. 

“Dick! Just call the cops!” You snarl, panic rising audibly as more bodies emerge from God knows where. You kick the one to your front off to the side, shredding its neck. It takes everything in you not to vomit. In the corner of your eye, you see Dick type as he kicks another one away. You two back into each other as the bodies close around you, cutting off all the exits. You roll up your sleeve tracing a blood-soaked finger over the lines of your tattoo and producing another knife. Dick pulls out his bird-a-rangs. 

Dick landed blows but they weren’t hard enough to maim or be fatal. Even if he was to hit them with the sharp bird-a-rangs, he would still aim non fatally. Slade would kill you if you fought so inefficiently or maybe he would just taunt you. Either way, you didn’t care much for Dick’s squeamishness right now as the bodies kept getting back up. As far as you can tell, you’re doing them a favor. 

The first wave of bodies rushes towards you. Their limbs jutting towards you clumsily. You swing your blade, vicious and precise. You feel metal clash against flesh, against bone. Blood coats every available surface on you. You hear Dick squawk and you don’t really need to turn around to check that he’s also covered in it too. The spray of blood makes the air thick with the scent of copper. The blood on your skin burns. 

“Duck!”

“Goose!” You shout, ducking and slashing down at a row of bodies and legs. You hear his bird-a-rangs slice through the air cleanly and land on one of the creature's shoulders. You let out a huff of air thinking of all the more permanent places it could have landed. He throws a few more hitting them in the face. 

Dick launches over you, using you as a springboard. You grunt and he winks at you like a showman. His foot predictably lands an impressive blow on one of the creature's faces. You two regroup back to back immediately after he lands. 

Your eyes widen a fraction when a hand from out of nowhere grabs at your face catching you off guard. Your breath catches when you feel a hand at your shoulder pushing you down. A fist makes contact with the creature’s swollen face and it takes a moment for your mind to realize that it’s Dick’s hand on your shoulder and Dick’s fist making contact with the creature. 

“Thanks,” You mumble, straightening yourself out. “I had it.”

“You’re welcome, Pookie.” You flush as Dick winks at you. “You know I literally have your back.” He teases. You groan bending back into a fighting stance.

“When we get out of here alive, we are working on your sense of humor.” Dick chuckles at that, making your muscles ease. “Says the person who shouted ‘Goose!’.” 

You land every blow with every intent to make it fatal. Dick is still sticking to his nonfatal method. Normally, it was pure joy to watch Dick as he fights. The sheer control he commands over his muscles was awe-inspiring. Despite his size, he’s able to land blows just as powerful as yours. He would truly be terrifying if he were to be anything but himself. 

These bodies. They’re too alive, too much. The next wave comes at you more fervently with more bodies. Another wave of nausea hits you when hands grasp at your arms. Your stomach tries to twist out of your abdomen. You try to wrench yourself free. You pull and twist and thrash, only succeeding in getting yourself pulled in deeper. 

“Dick!” You cry reflexively. The coarseness in your voice lets the fear spill all over your vowels. 

Dick’s corscian eyes widen with a flash of panic. To Dick, you and death were two separate lines running on parallel tracks next to each other, never quite crossing and never belonging to the same headspace. Completely mutually exclusive as far as he knew. But right at this moment, right as you’re about to be swallowed whole by the crowd of misshapen bodies, he watches those lines slowly intersect. Dick doesn’t know where his heart has leaped to. 

“Y/n!”

  
  


The world resurfaces in a surge of bright white light. Some small part of you is  _ really _ hoping that Dick is, for once, right about the alien thing. Quietly you draw in a calming breath. It’s shallow not wanting your chest to rise too much to give away your consciousness. 

The opera music is blaring in your still ringing head which isn’t helped by the wannabe opera singer belting his lungs out. Thankfully, that means he’s distracted. You move your limbs checking. Everything _ seems _ to be intact AND you seem to be tied up to someone instead of something which was either good or bad depending on who it is. 

“Mornin’ sleepy head” Dick mumbles quietly, sounding relieved. You click your teeth in irritation. 

“Morning, Disco Stick. Any chance you magically woke up with a plan or were you just taking a beauty nap?”

“I don’t need one and sort of.”

“Well shit, we’re screwed then.” 

“You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m sorry which of us is running around doing somersaults when they’re assaulting criminals?”

“In my defense, flipping makes my kicks land harder.” Which was true but you were feeling snippy. “It also gives them much more time to dodge or counter.”

“Killjoy.” You roll your eyes, smiling. You know he’s being cute and pouting. Given this is really not the time considering there is a man butchering another man a few feet away from you while singing bad opera. You really did stumble into a horror movie. “Please tell me you called Batman or the police.”

“Both.”

“How?”

“Some of us are good at multitasking.” Dick chirps proudly leaning against you. You scoff judging just how tightly the ropes are bound around you. 

“Well, you are good at being insufferable while still breathing.”

“Isn’t that part of my charm?”

You snicker accidentally tugging at the binds around you. You hear Dick wince likely from what is a bruised rib or, heaven help you, a broken one. “Sorry.” You whisper low and small.

Shit. What if he had a broken rib. Shit. Shit. 

“I’m ok, Hon.” Dick laughs making sure to lay the Delaware accent thick. It makes your chest feel warm even though everything else in you was freezing from dread. You snort. “Fine, bleed out for all I care.”

“Awwww don’t be like that.” You sigh. You hate how weak you are to his puppy dog eyes. You can’t even see it. You decide to change the subject instead. “So what are the odds that we’re escaping if we break out of their bonds now?”

“Not high.”

“Even if I get Yasiri to gently  _ inject _ him with poison?”

“Please tell me you didn’t bring poison to our hangout.”

“I mean. Do twinkies count?”

“No.”

“Ok, fine. So we’re stalling then.”

“Pretty much.”

“I hate this.”

“You were the one who started heading in.”

“Why didn’t you stop me then?”

The man at the surgical table turns to you with a whimsical flourish as the body on the table goes limp. No, not limp. Docile. You have just witnessed a person become a body, you think numbly. The way the fight so easily left its limbs made you shudder, feeling the fight in your own limbs fleeting out. This isn’t how you want to die, not by the hand of a madman. At least, not until you’ve put your own demons to rest. 

“Look who’s awake,” He drawls, his voice slimy and all the vowels coming out at the wrong pitches. Dick shifts the two of you so that he’s angled slightly in front of you. He squares his shoulder trying to make his lean form look far bigger than it actually is. You smile at his attempt to be protective because deep down you both know you’re the more intimidating one and you’re the one who can take more punishment. Your power and training have those pleasant side effects. 

You see him draw closer making you snarl. “Come any closer and I swear I will rip your throat out.” You are surprised at how even the threat came out but the distilled ferocity you had put into it didn’t quite show, likely blunted by the fear pooling in your stomach. 

“Don’t worry I’ll make you perfect too. I promise.” He reaches past Dick, grabbing you by the back of your neck. The grip on you is bruising and callous. He forces you to bow your head and look down at the bloodstains on your clothes. The browning blots of red stain your white Wonder Woman shirt. You swallow. You felt like a lamb being dragged to slaughter. Dick, likely without thinking, bites down on the man’s wrist.

The man pulls away with a cry, cradling his bleeding wrist. “Are you ok?” Dick asks, spitting blood out, eyes shiny with concern. You gulp down air before nodding. Dick presses closer to you reassuring you. Shaken, you press back, careful not to press hard enough to hurt him. 

Your floundering mind comes to one conclusion. You can’t let him touch Dick. You use your strength to shift your positions so that Dick is completely behind you. Dick tries to move you back but you plant your heels preventing him from even inching. 

The man grabs you by the collar of your shirt, pulling you off the ground. You hear Dick’s breath hitch. His heart rate kicks up and so does yours. Fury burning in the man’s eyes. “WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?” He screams, shaking you. “NO. NO. NO. MY- I’M- NO! PERFECT. I NEED- I NEED TO BE PERFECT.” Somehow the spit flying in your face grosses you out more than the blood probably drying on your face. It’s only winning by a small margin though. 

Bile is rising in your throat. Still, you grin, sneering and taunting. “Trust me you didn’t need help in the department,” You jeer. Dick squirms behind you. Urging you to stop. You don’t. “You think those pisspoor excuses for creatures you sicced on us were perfect. HA!” You can feel Dick shaking his head behind you. You nudge him assuring him you’ve got a plan. You did. Sort of. It’s more of a goal really. Take his attention off of Dick. 

“[Y/n, please no. Don’t do this. I know what you’re doing. But I can take it. Moon, please.]” Dick pleads, voice hoarse and desperate. ‘Shion’. Moon. The endearment glances of your ribs like a well placed kick to the chest. You don’t let your eyes flick to him. “[Which us is meta here?]” You whisper back in broken Romani. You cringe a little knowing just how badly you butchered the sentence. Dick makes an affronted noise. “Cham.” You whisper quietly, trying to shape your vowels and consonants correctly. Dick’s breath catches. Sun. Sure, the endearment seemed inadequate, too succinct, when compared to how much you care for him but as of right now it will have to do. 

The man shakes you again dragging your attention away from Dick. Your smarmy grin cuts across your face as if you’re not pissing yourself from fear. A large hand grabs your face. Your entire body braces itself for your neck to be twisted but it does not come. He tilts your head back side to side. “You’re going to need a lot of work.”

Your heart stops. Dick thrashes behind you. You want to elbow him. You want to scream at him to stop fucking moving but you’re entire body is numb. Your eyes flick to the man, no, the body on the table. It is breathing and writhing in agony. Your breaths pick up. You- you don’t- you can’t-

You hear a crash and the fall of debris on a dozen bodies. 

“B!” Dick shouts distantly. The grip on your collar disappears. A black clad fist hangs in front of you. Your eyes trace up the arm in front of you only to be met with the scowling face of the Batman. You swallow nervously while Dick lets out another enthusiastic ‘B’. Batman makes quick work of your ropes, all the while glaring at you for what you don’t know. Maybe somehow he knows this whole situation was your fault. 

Once released, the first order of business, at least for Dick, is to throw his arms around Batman’s shoulders. Awkwardly, he reciprocates your friend’s affection. The hold he has on Dick cannot be mistaken as anything but protective. You find humor in the fact at how obvious their familial connection is yet they deny it. A teasing remark rises up your throat but is abruptly shoved back down by Batman’s unrelenting glare. Was he born glaring? 

“What are you doing here?” Less of a question and more of a growled accusation. 

“Careful, his rib might be broken.” You stumble out dumbly. Dick glares at you but compared to Batman’s it looks more like a pout which is, again, hilarious. Batman loosens his grip on Dick and apparently, this is now the time Dick chooses to realize that his mentor (read: dad) is trying to turn you into ash with a scowl. 

Dick peels away from him stepping in front of you. He widens his stance to shield you from the larger man. Dick feels an odd surge of protectiveness and he’s not about to let B attack you, especially not after what just happened. 

They stare each other down. They seem to be having a silent argument. You want to cut in but you’re afraid you might actually turn into ash with the intensity of Batman’s gaze. 

The loud blaring of sirens mingle with the still playing opera music in the background as a tidal wave of police officers and paramedics rush in. 

\-----

  
  


You pestered the medic to let you stay with Dick. 

“So, what do you plan on doing?” Dick asks, leaning against you pointedly ignoring the paramedic's instruction to be careful. You let him lean into you. You know he needs all the comfort he can get. You rest your head against his hair, placing a kiss on his scalp. Dick doesn’t comment afraid that you might withdraw if he teases you too much. 

“Maybe grow out my hair,” You joke, pinching a lock of hair between your fingers. “Might as well considering how grounded I’ll be. Well, if uncle Wintergreen has anything to say about it.”

Dick extricates himself from your shoulder and turns to you with a pensive look. Tilting his head, he looks at you appraisingly, wrinkling his brow. You can’t blame him. He’s never seen you with long hair mainly because you’ve never let it get too long. Too much of a hassle, too much of a health hazard. 

Dick places his jacket over your head, draping it over you like a wedding veil. You chuckle at him, barely able to keep the smile off of your face. 

“How do I look?” You joke twining your fingers around the cloth. You think you see Dick blush but it was probably just the cold. Dick coughs poorly disguising his laughter. He covers his mouth, depriving you of his dimples. “ Like you’re going to get married in a jean pants suit. I have dibs on walking you down the aisle.” 

You tilt your head. Your smile tilts along with it. “Nah uncle Wintergreen has dibs on that.”

Dick huffs, his shoulders sag in disappointment. It’s the closest he was gonna get to being your groom, he thinks. 

I want you waiting for me at the end of the aisle. The thought makes your heart twist. You swallow it along with the huge lump in your throat. “You can be my last dance though.”

You concede. Dick brightens a little at this but not by much. 

“You sure Deathstroke wouldn’t mind?” 

“This implies he’ll show up. He’s a busy man.” Dick laughs at that. Genuine and very Dick. This time you don’t fight the smile off of your face. 

You smile at each other and laugh. A million unspoken sentences hang between the two of you. 

This love of yours is reckless.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
